5

Writing in the disciplines:

Research evidence for specificity

Ken Hyland

Centre for Applied English Studies

University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Academic writing, much like any other kind of writing, is only effective when writers use

conventions that other members of their community find familiar and convincing. Essentially the

process of writing involves creating a text that we assume the reader will recognise and expect, and

the process of reading involves drawing on assumptions about what the writer is trying to do. It is

this writer-reader coordination which enables the co-construction of coherence from a text. Scholars

and students alike must therefore attempt to use conventions that other members of their discipline,

whether journal editors and reviewers or subject specialist teachers and examiners, will recognise and

accept. Because of this discourse analysis has become a central tool for identifying the specific

language features of target groups. In this paper I draw on my own work, conducted over several

years into research and student genres, to show how some familiar conventions of academic writing

are used in different disciplines and what these differences can tell us about the work in the disciplines

themselves.

Keywords: academic writing, conventions, discourse analysis, genres

1. Introduction

Specificity is perhaps the most central concept in language teaching and discourse

analysis today and represents a key way in which we understand and practice English

for Academic and Specific Purposes. Our understanding of specificity, and how

language varies in different contexts, has been greatly assisted in the last twenty years

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by research in discourse analysis, which has become an invaluable tool for scholars and

teachers, highlighting typical patterning and salient features of academic writing.

Where once intuition and impression guided teaching, we now have evidence for

language variation across disciplines, genres, modes, and languages which is increasingly

informing classroom materials and practice. In this paper I want to explore something

of the contribution that discourse analysis research has made to the study of academic

texts, drawing largely on my own research, to examine the idea of specificity. In

particular I will focus on the importance of disciplinary specific language use and give

some examples of this.

2. Discourse analysis and academic specificity

Discourse analytic studies show considerable variation in academic language use

across a range of dimensions. Halliday (1989), for example, found greater nominalization,

impersonalisation and lexical density in written compared with spoken texts. There is

also a high degree of specificity in the kinds of writing that students are asked to do, so

that even students in fairly similar fields, such as nursing and midwifery, are given very

different writing assignments (Gimenez, 2009). Research on vocabulary shows that

terminology varies enormously across disciplines and even that the same words have

different frequencies, collocations and often different meanings in different fields

(Hyland & Tse, 2007). Similarly, research in contrastive rhetoric (e.g. Hinkel, 2002) has

pointed to cultural specificity in rhetorical preferences, so that students’ first language

and prior learning is seen to influence ways of organising ideas and structuring

arguments when writing in English at university.

Perhaps most research into specificity has attended to genre, where particular

purposes and audiences lead writers to employ very different choices (e.g. Hyland,

2009). Table 1, for example, compares frequencies for different features in a corpus of

240 research articles and 56 textbooks.

Ken Hyland

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Table 1 Selected features in research articles and textbooks per 1000 words (Hyland,

2005)

Genre Hedges Self-mention Citation Transitions

Research Articles 15.1 3.9 6.9 12.8

University Textbooks 8.1 1.6 1.7 24.9

We can see considerable variation in these features across the two genres. The

greater use of hedging underlines the need for caution and opening up arguments in the

research papers compared with the authorized certainties of the textbook, while the

removal of citation in textbooks shows how statements are presented as facts rather than

claims grounded in the literature. The greater use of self-mention in articles points to the

personal stake that writers invest in their arguments and their desire to gain credit for

claims, while the higher frequency of transitions, which are conjunctions and other

linking signals, in the textbooks is a result of the fact that writers need to make connections

far more explicit for readers with less topic knowledge.

Overwhelmingly, however, it is disciplinary variation which underlies most

specificity and this is what I want to focus on here. Research into differences in

academic practices and the texts that these produce is relatively new, partly because the

notion of discipline, and its underlying reliance on the idea of community, has been

difficult to pin down, and partly because of our fixation with genre in recent years.

While genre has provided a significant way of understanding situated language use, its

power to harness generalisations has led us to over-emphasize resemblances between

texts at the expense of variation. But, as Swales made clear in 1990, we need to see

community and genre together to offer a framework of how meanings are socially

constructed by forces outside the individual. Research on language variation across the

disciplines is rapidly becoming one of the dominant paradigms in EAP (e.g. Hyland,

2004; Fløttum et al., 2006; Hyland & Bondi, 2006).

Specificity here refers to what I hope is a fairly uncontroversial idea: that we

communicate as members of social groups and that different groups use language to

conduct their business, define their boundaries, and manage their interactions in particular

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ways. For EAP teachers this means focusing on communicating, and learning to

communicate, as a disciplinary insider.

3. Disciplinary specificity

The idea of discipline has become important in EAP as we have become more

sensitive to the ways genres are written and responded to by individuals acting as members

of social groups. Essentially, we can see disciplines as language using communities and

the term helps us join writers, texts and readers together. Communities provide the

context within which we learn to communicate and to interpret each other’s talk,

gradually acquiring the specialized discourse competencies to participate as group

members. So we can see disciplines as particular ways of doing things-particularly of

using language to engage with others in certain recognised and familiar ways.

Academic texts are about persuasion and this involves making choices to argue in ways

which fit the community’s assumptions, methods, and knowledge. This is how Wells

(1992: 290) sees matters:

Each subject discipline constitutes a way of making sense of human experience

that has evolved over generations and each is dependent on its own particular

practices: its instrumental procedures, its criteria for judging relevance and

validity, and its conventions of acceptable forms of argument. In a word each

has developed its own modes of discourse.

To work in a discipline, then, we need to be able to engage in these practices and, in

particular, in its discourses.

So disciplines structure the work we do within wider frameworks of beliefs and

provide the conventions and expectations that make texts meaningful. We can see this

if we picture the disciplines as spread along a cline (See Figure 1), with the ‘hard’

sciences at one end and the ‘softer’ humanities at the other.

Ken Hyland

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SCIENCES SOCIAL SCIENCES HUMANITIES

Empirical and objective Explicitly interpretive

Linear and cumulative growth of knowledge Dispersed knowledge

Experimental methods Discursive argument

Quantitative methods Qualitative methods

More concentrated readership More varied readership

Highly structured genres More fluid discourses

Figure 1 Continuum of academic knowledge (after Coffin et al., 2003)

In the sciences new knowledge is accepted by experimental proof. Science writing

reinforces this by highlighting a gap in knowledge, presenting a hypothesis related to

this gap, and then reporting experimental findings to support this in a standard

Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion format. The humanities such as literature,

history and philosophy, on the other hand, largely rely on case studies and narratives

while claims are accepted on strength of argument. The social sciences fall between

these extremes. Disciplines such as Sociology, Economics and Applied Linguistics have

partly adopted methods of the sciences, but in applying these to human data they have

to give far more attention to explicit interpretation than those fields. In other words,

academic discourse helps to give identity to a discipline. This means that we need to

understand the distinctive ways they have of asking questions, addressing a literature,

criticizing ideas, and presenting arguments, so we can help students participate

effectively in their learning.

4. Some example differences

I want to turn now to these disciplinary differences and look at a series of studies

I have conducted over the past decade or so into the features of a 1.5 million word

corpus of research articles in 8 disciplines and 4 million words of student dissertations

together with interviews with 30 academics. I will briefly highlight a few of the

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disciplinary differences in these corpora, focusing on citation, reporting verbs, hedges,

self-mention, directives, and lexical bundles.

4.1 Citation practices

One of the most striking differences in disciplinary uses of language is in citation

practices. The inclusion of references to the work of other authors is obviously central

to academic persuasion. This is because it not only helps establish a persuasive

framework for the acceptance of arguments by showing how a text depends on previous

work in a discipline, but also as it displays the writer’s credibility and status as an

insider. It helps align him or her with a particular community or orientation and

confirms that this is someone who is aware of, and is knowledgeable about, the topics,

approaches, and issues which currently interest and inform the field. But because

discourse communities see the world in different ways they also write about it in different

ways, with Table 2 showing that two thirds of all the citations in the article corpus in the

philosophy, sociology, marketing and applied linguistics papers, twice as many as in the

science disciplines (Hyland, 1999).

Table 2 Rank order of citations by discipline per 1,000 words

‘Soft’ Disciplines per 1000 words ‘Hard’ Disciplines per 1000 words

Sociology 12.5 Biology 15.5

Philosophy 10.8 Electrical Engineering 8.4

Applied Linguistics 10.8 Mechanical Engineering 7.3

Marketing 10.1 Physics 7.4

Basically, the differences reflect the extent writers can assume a shared context

with readers. In Kuhn’s (1962) ‘normal science’ model, natural scientists produce

public knowledge through cumulative growth. Problems tend to emerge on the back of

earlier problems as results throw up further questions to be followed up with further

research so writers do not need to report research with extensive referencing. The

Ken Hyland

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people who read those papers are often working on the same problems and are familiar

with the earlier work. They have a good idea about the procedures used, whether they

have been properly applied, and what results mean. In the humanities and social

sciences, on the other hand, the literature is more dispersed and the readership more

heterogeneous, so writers cannot presuppose a shared context but have to build one far

more through citation.

This rather neat explanation drawing on a hard-soft discipline dichotomy is spoilt

somewhat by the fact that biology has the highest citation count per 1000 words.

Interestingly, this is largely due to a very high proportion of self-citation with 13% of

all citations to the current author compared with about 6% overall among other disciplines

in the corpus. There does, in fact, seem to be a considerable emphasis given to

recognising the ownership of ideas in biology and showing how current research builds

on the work of others, which makes it unusual among the sciences (Hyland, 2004).

4.2 Reporting verbs

There are also major differences in the ways writers report others’ work, with

results suggesting that writers in different fields draw on very different sets of reporting

verbs to refer to their literature (Hyland, 1999). Among the higher frequency verbs,

almost all instances of say and 80% of think occurred in philosophy and 70% of use in

electronics. It turns out, in fact, that engineers show, philosophers argue, biologists find

and linguists suggest. The most common forms across the disciplines are shown in

Table 3.

Table 3 Most frequent reporting verbs.

‘Soft’ Disciplines ‘Hard’ Disciplines

Philosophy say, suggest, argue, claim Biology describe, find, report, show

Sociology argue, suggest, describe, discuss Elec Eng. show, propose, report, describe

Applied Ling. suggest, argue, show, explain Mech Eng. show, report, describe, discuss

Marketing suggest, argue, demonstrate, propose Physics develop, report, study

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These preferences seem to reflect broad disciplinary purposes. So, the soft fields

largely use verbs which refer to writing activities, like discuss, hypothesize, suggest,

argue. These involve the expression of arguments and allow writers to discursively

explore issues while carrying a more evaluative element in reporting others’ work:

(1) Lindesmith’s (1965) classic work indicated the…

Davidson defends this claim on the grounds that…

Engineers and scientists, in contrast, prefer verbs which point to the research itself like

observe, discover, show, analyse, and calculate, which represent real world actions.

(2) Edson et al (1993) showed processes were induced….

... using (4) special process and design, or by adding (5), or removing (6) a mask.

This emphasis on real-world activities helps scientists represent knowledge as proceeding

from impersonal lab activities rather than from the interpretations of researchers. Two

scientist informants commented on this kind of use:

Of course, I make decisions about the findings I have, but it is more convincing

to tie them closely to the results. (Physics interview)

You have to relate what you say to your colleagues and we don’t encourage

people to go out and nail their colours to the mast as maybe they don’t get it

published. (Biology interview)

The conventions of impersonality in science articles thus play an important role in

reinforcing an objective ideology by portraying the legitimacy of hard science

knowledge as built on socially invariant criteria. Again, it removes the author from the

text to give priority to the unmediated voice of nature itself.

Ken Hyland

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4.3 Hedges

Devices like possible, might, likely, and so on, collectively known as hedges, also

diverge across fields. These function to withhold complete commitment to a proposition,

implying that a claim is based on plausible reasoning rather than certain knowledge.

They indicate the degree of confidence the writer thinks it might be wise to give a claim

while opening a discursive space for readers to dispute interpretations (Hyland, 1996).

Because they represent the writer’s direct involvement in a text, something that

scientists generally try to avoid, they are twice as common in humanities and social

science papers than in hard sciences. So, we tend to find more statements like this:

(3) The existence of such networks did not go unnoticed by contemporaries

(see, Rocke, 1989), and it seems sensible to assume the men concerned were

probably not unreflective about this patterned conduct either. (Sociology)

With hindsight, we believe it might have been better to have presented the

questionnaire bilingually. (Applied Linguistics)

One reason for this is there is less control of variables, more diversity of research

outcomes, and fewer clear bases for accepting claims than in the sciences. Writers

cannot report research with the same confidence of shared assumptions so papers rely

far more on recognizing alternative voices. Arguments have to be expressed more

cautiously by using more hedges.

In the hard sciences positivist epistemologies mean that the authority of the

individual is subordinated to the authority of the text and facts are meant to ‘speak for

themselves’. This means that writers often disguise their interpretative activities behind

linguistic objectivity. They downplay their personal role to suggest that results would

be the same whoever conducted the research. The less frequent use of hedges is one

way of minimising the researcher’s role, and so is the preference for modals over

cognitive verbs. This is because modal verbs can more easily combine with inanimate

subjects to downplay the person making the evaluation. So we are more likely to find

examples like (4) in the sciences and those with cognitive verbs in the soft discipline

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fields (5):

(4) For V. trifidum, ANOVA showed a significant increase from L to L’ and

FI, which could be interpreted as reflecting the dynamics of fungal

colonization. ( Biology)

The deviations at high frequencies may have been caused by the

noise measurements. (Electrical Engineering)

(5) I think this would be a mistake. (Sociology)

We suspect that the product used in this study may have contributed to

the result. (Marketing)

Scientists tend to be concerned with generalisations rather than individuals, so

greater weight is put on the methods, procedures and equipment used rather than the

argument. Modals, then, are one way of helping to reinforce a view of science as an

impersonal, inductive enterprise while allowing scientists to see themselves as

discovering truth rather than constructing it.

4.4 Self- mention

Self-mention is another important feature which varies across disciplines. This

concerns how far writers want to intrude into their texts through use of ‘I’ or ‘we’, or to

use impersonal forms. Presenting a discoursal self is central to the writing process, and

we cannot avoid projecting an impression of ourselves and how we stand in relation to

our arguments, discipline, and readers. To some extent we have to see this as a personal

preference determined by seniority, experience, confidence, personality, and so on, but

the presence or absence of explicit author reference is a conscious choice by writers to

adopt a particular community-situated authorial identity. However, my 240 research

articles, once again, show broad disciplinary preferences with 2/3 of cases in the social

sciences & humanities papers (Hyland, 2001b). Table 4 presents the distribution of the

use of self-mention across the eight disciplines in my research article corpus.

Ken Hyland

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Table 4 Self-mention in research articles per 1,000 words

Soft disciplines Hard disciplines

Philosophy 5.5 Physics 4.1

Sociology 4.3 Biology 3.4

Applied Linguistics 4.5 Mechanical Engineering 1.0

Marketing 5.5 Electrical Engineering 3.3

Average 5.0 2.9

Now it is clear that writers in different disciplines represent themselves, their work

and their readers in different ways, with those in the humanities and social sciences taking

far more personal positions than those in the sciences and engineering. The reason for

this is again that the strategic use of self-mention allows writers to claim authority by

expressing their convictions, emphasizing their contribution to the field, and seeking

recognition for their work (Hyland, 2001b; Kuo, 1999). It sends a clear indication to the

reader of the perspective from which statements should be interpreted and distinguishes

the writer’s own work from that of others. Successful communication in the soft fields

depends far more on the author’s ability to invoke the sense of a real writer in the text,

emphasizing their own contribution to the field while seeking agreement for it.

(6) I argue that their treatment is superficial because, despite appearances, it

relies solely on a sociological, as opposed to an ethical, orientation to

develop a response. (Sociology)

I bring to bear on the problem my own experience. This experience

contains ideas derived from reading I have done which might be relevant

to my puzzlement as well as my personal contacts with teaching contexts.

(Applied Linguistics)

So self-mention can help construct an intelligent, credible, and engaging colleague

by presenting a confident and authoritative authorial self.

In the hard sciences, as I noted earlier, researchers are generally seeking to

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downplay their personal role in the research to highlight the phenomena under study, the

replicability of research activities, and the generality of the findings. Scientists, then,

try to distance themselves from interpretations in ways that are familiar to most EAP

teachers. They accomplish this by either using the passive voice (7), dummy ‘it’

subjects (8), or by attributing agency to inanimate things (9):

(7) This suggestion was confirmed by the observation that only plants

carrying the pAG-I::GUS transgene showed a gain of GUS staining in

leaves of clf-2 plants. (Biology)

(8) It was found that a larger stand-off height would give a smaller maximum

shear strain when subjected to thermal fatigue...

(Mechanical Engineering)

(9) The images demonstrate that the null point is once again well resolved and

that diffusion is symmetric. (Physics)

By subordinating their voice to that of nature, scientists rely on the persuasive

force of lab procedures rather than the force of their writing. As this biologist told me:

I feel a paper is stronger if we are allowed to see what was done without ‘we

did this’ and ‘we think that’. Of course we know there are researchers there,

making interpretations and so on, but this is just assumed. It’s part of the

background. I’m looking for something interesting in the study and it shouldn’t

really matter who did what in any case. (...) In theory anyone should be able

to follow the same procedures and get the same results. (Biology interview)

In contrast, in the humanities and social sciences, the first person allows writers to

strongly identify with a particular argument and to gain credit for an individual

perspective:

Using ‘I’ emphasizes what you have done. What is yours in any piece of

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research. I notice it in papers and use it a lot myself. (Sociology interview)

The personal pronoun ‘I’ is very important in philosophy. It not only tells

people that it is your own unique point of view, but that you believe what you

are saying. It shows your colleagues where you stand in relation to the issues

and in relation to where they stand on them. It marks out the differences.

(Philosophy interview)

By marking your views with the first person, you leave readers in no doubt of your

stance while claiming credit for what you are saying. It is a powerful way of demonstrating

an individual contribution and establishing a claim for priority.

4.5 Directives

Another feature which supports the idea of disciplinary specificity is directives.

These are devices which instruct the reader to perform an action or to see things in a

way determined by the writer (Hyland, 2002). They are largely expressed through

imperatives (e.g. consider, note, imagine) and obligation modals (such as must, should,

and ought). Overall, they direct readers to three main kinds of activity: textual, physical

and cognitive acts.

‧Textual acts direct readers to another part of the text or to another text (e.g. see Smith

1999, refer to table 2)

‧Physical acts direct readers how to carry out some action in the real-world (e.g. open

the valve, heat the mixture).

‧Cognitive acts instruct readers how to interpret an argument, explicitly positioning

readers by encouraging them to note, concede or consider some argument or claim in

the text.

Generally, explicit engagement, where writers address readers directly in a text

(Hyland, 2001a) is a feature of the soft disciplines, where writers are less able to rely on

the explanatory value of accepted procedures. Directives, however, are a potentially

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risky way of seeking to build a connection with readers as they instruct them to act or

see things in a way determined by the writer (Hyland, 2002). They may therefore be

seen as assuming unwarranted authority and so encourage a hostile response and a

rejection of the claim being made. As a result, most directives in the soft fields are

textual, directing readers to a reference or table rather than telling them how they should

interpret an argument. So examples like these are common in the social sciences:

(10)… see Steuer 1983 for a discussion of other contingencies’ effects.

(Marketing)

Look at Table 2 again for examples of behavioristic variables. (Marketing)

For transcription conventions please refer to the Appendix.

(Applied Linguistics)

Two of my social science respondents noted this about their writing in their interviews:

I am very conscious of using words like ‘must’ and ‘consider’ and so on and

use them for a purpose. I want to say ‘Right, stop here. This is important and

I want you to take notice of it’. So I suppose I am trying to take control of the

reader and getting them to see things my way. (Sociologist interview)

I am aware of the effect that an imperative can have so I tend to use the more

gentle ones. I don’t want to bang them over the head with an argument I want

them to reflect on what I’m saying. I use ‘consider’ and ‘let’s look at this’

rather than something stronger. (Applied Linguist interview)

Argument in the hard knowledge fields, in contrast, is formulated in a highly

standardised code. Succinctness is valued by both editors and scientists, and directives

allow writers to cut directly to the heart of key issues in the text. Because of this we find

a high proportion of cognitive directives here which explicitly position readers by

leading them through an argument or emphasising what they should attend to:

Ken Hyland

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(11) What has to be recognized is that these issues…….. (Mechanical Eng)

Consider the case where a very versatile milling machine of type M5...

(Electrical Eng)

A distinction must be made between cytogenetic and molecular resolution.

(Biology)

My informants noted this in their interviews:

I rarely give a lot of attention to the dressing, I look for the meat - the findings

- and if the argument is sound. If someone wants to save me time in getting

there then that is fine. No, I’m not worried about imperatives leading me

through it. (Electrical Engineering interview)

I’m very conscious of how I write and I am happy to use an imperative if it

puts my idea over clearly. Often we are trying to work to word limits anyway,

squeezing fairly complex arguments into a tight space.

(Mechanical Engineering interview)

4.6 Bundles

The final example of disciplinary specificity I want to mention is lexical bundles,

or frequently occurring word sequences. These are a key way of shaping text meanings

and contributing to our sense of distinctiveness and naturalness in a register. So

collocations like as a result of and it should be noted that, help identify a text as

belonging to an academic register while in pursuance of, and in accordance with mark

out a legal text. Using a corpus of 120 research articles and 120 post-graduate dissertations

in four disciplines I found that the most common bundles in this academic corpus of 3.5

million words were on the other hand, at the same time and in the case of, all of which

occurred over 100 times per million words (Hyland, 2008).

There are, however, some interesting disciplinary differences. The electrical

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engineering texts contained the greatest range of high frequency bundles and also the

highest proportion of words in 4-word bundles. Biology, on the other hand, had the

smallest range of bundles, the fewest examples, and the lowest proportion of texts

comprised of words in bundles. So the electrical engineering texts were most dependent

on prefabricated bundles and used many sequences not found in the other disciplines,

perhaps because of the fact that technical communication is relatively abstract and

graphical. This means that language constructs an argument by linking data or findings

in routinely patterned, formulaic ways with the same forms used repeatedly.

There are also considerable differences across disciplines in the 4-word bundles.

The top 20 most common ones are shown in their rank order within disciplines in Table

5 with items that occur in all four disciplines marked in bold and those in three disciplines

are shaded (Hyland, 2008).

Table 5 Most frequent 4-word bundles (bold = in 4 disciplines; shaded = in 3 disciplines)

Biology Electrical Eng Applied Ling Business Studies

in the presence of on the other hand on the other hand on the other hand

in the present study as shown in figure at the same time in the case of

on the other hand in the case of in terms of the at the same time

the end of the is shown in figure on the basis of at the end of

is one of the it can be seen in relation to the on the basis of

at the end of as shown in fig in the case of as well as the

it was found that is shown in fig in the present study the extent to which

at the beginning of can be seen that the end of the the end of the

as well as the can be used to the nature of the significantly different from zero

as a result of the performance of the in the form of are more likely to

it is possible that as a function of as well as the the relationship between the

are shown in figure is based on the at the end of the results of the

was found to be with respect to the the fact that the the hang seng index

be due to the is given by equation in the context of the other hand the

in the case of the effect of the is one of the in the context of

is shown in figure the magnitude of the in the process of as a result of

the beginning of the at the same time the results of the the performance of the

the nature of the in this case the in terms of their hong kong stock market

the fact that the it is found that to the fact that is positively related to

may be due to the size of the in the sense that are significantly different from

Ken Hyland

21

The table clearly shows the extent of disciplinary specificity with just two forms

in all four disciplines (on the other hand and in the case of) and a handful in three fields.

In fact, over half of all items in the top 50 bundles in each discipline do not occur in the

top 50 of any other discipline. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the greatest similarities are

between cognate fields, linking the soft disciplines together and the hard disciplines

together. Business studies and applied linguistics share 18 items in the top 50 with on

the basis of, in the context of, the relationship between the, and it is important to exclusive

to these two fields. Similarly, biology and electrical engineering have 16 bundles in

common, with it was found that, is shown in figure, as shown in figure, is due to the, and

the presence of the not found in the social science list at all.

5. Conclusion

Discourse studies reveal that the features I have presented here all occur and

behave in dissimilar ways in different disciplines. The fact that writers in different fields

draw on different resources to develop their arguments, establish their credibility and

persuade their readers means that EAP teachers need to take the disciplines of their

students, and the ways these disciplines create texts, into account in their classroom

practices. Such considerations, moreover, are not confined to student writing but

underlie the conventions which guide scholarly writing for academic publication. The

value of discourse analysis is not that it merely produces a list of the features of

disciplinary discourses, but that it can uncover more sophisticated understanding of

disciplinary communities. It provides a richer picture for academics and for teachers of

EAP and so helps us to improve the ways we prepare our students for their academic

studies.

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Ken Hyland